To Death, with love
by BlackBird666
Summary: Can you accept death when it stands before you? Can you watch a lover die without guilt or remorse? Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy can't.


I own nothing.

To Death, with love.

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Well, I dare say this is it then. This is the end. The bitter, repulsive, mind shatteringly terrifying end.

I'm not ready to meet you, not ready to take your skeleton's hand. But who is, really? Is anyone ever really ready to die? Does an old man consciously wake up one morning and think to himself,_ I'm ready to die! I don't fear the reaper. _Even as I write this, the Blue Oyster Cult song begins to meander through my splitting head.

So many people I've met claim they are not afraid of you. When the Fire Whisky starts flowing and the fire is lit in the common room, they would all say how willing they were to die for the cause. That they fear neither death no pain, that they fear nothing.

But, all I could think, as I watched them from some dark, broody corner was: The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one. Good god, who said that? I want to say William St—something... but no, that's not right, is it? Wil—Wi—

Whatever. The point is, no one is ever really ready to die. They may want to die, but in the same way as a baby bird wants to fly, they are not ready for it to actually happen. A man may be willing to sacrifice himself for a cause, as is mentioned above, but he isn't ready to for the inky black oblivion that will follow his ascent into herodom. He might not be afraid of it, but how could he ever be ready for something so uncertain.

The Egyptians spent their whole lives readying themselves for death. They prepared for it, choosing what items they wished to accompany them into the afterlife, building their sarcophagi and pyramids before they even had a wrinkle. They knew exactly what was going to happen to them after death, they knew that their bodies would be preserved in natron salts, wrapped carefully in linen and stored away in the dry heat to turn into human jerky. They knew that if their heart weighed more than a feather their soul would be eaten by Ammit.

But of course, now people don't believe such crazy notions. No, now, most British people think you go to a white light and splendour. Where all those who have died, billions and billions of people, reside in perfect paradise. Unless you're a sinner, or as I prefer to call it, vaguely interesting, then you burn in a lake of fire for all eternity.

What a laugh. No one knows if any of these things are certain. There's no proof, only some guy in robe and collar telling you that it must be true, that this how it is, and that it can be no other way, because if it is, well that's just to terrifying to contemplate. It's easy to believe in heaven and the sweet music of angels and lyres, it's what keeps the world from going insane with terror. It's also an agent of social control, all religion is. The promise of a sweet heaven and a terrifying hell are enough to keep most devotees firmly on the 'right path', that is the one that makes them a good, contributing member of society.

The truth is, as far as I can tell it, is that you go in the ground. You go in the cold hard mud, and you are eaten by worms and maggots and blowflies until all that's left is a few dusty old bones. A skull with eye sockets that no longer see, and a detached jaw that no longer laughs or smiles or snarls in rage.

And that's what terrifies me. The sheer end, the severing of all ties, a clear and biting end to all.

And that's what I'm facing, even now, as I sit here in a cold dungeon cell, warmth already beginning to leave my bones and the light already gone from my eyes. I'd give anything to stay alive, anything, anything in the world. Name your price, oh Dark Angel of Eternal Void, and I will gladly pay it. There is no pain I can imagine, no mental or physical wound, that I would not suffer to see another sunrise or drink another glass of Chardonnay with my dear love.

Well now, it seems I've lied; there is only one price I would not pay to see yet another cold and rainy London day. I would not give the life of my beloved. I wouldn't. I'd carve out my own heart with a thumb tack before I let you take him. I'd cut out my own tongue and force it done my throat, drowning myself on my own blood before I'd let him walk in your shadow. I'd—I'd pay any price for his heart beat, give any weight in flesh for the gentle rise and fall of his golden chest.

Even though he wouldn't do the same for me. That's why I'm here, Master of Scythes, that's why I await your bone shattering grasp.

I suppose it doesn't matter if I died now or fifty years from now. It will feel like no time has passed at all when it happens. Do you know what I mean? No matter how long you live, no matter how heavily the weight of years presses down upon you, the realization that you have no future, only a past, has to be a horrible one.

Well it is for me anyway. I suppose I'm glad I won't live till I'm old, grey and over eighty. What's there to do when you're that old? Nothing, but play cards and wait for death. Oh, and bitch to your children that they'll miss you when you die. My grandfather did that, but I'm reasonably certain my father didn't miss him at all. I certainly didn't.

I'll try to die with pride, with some dignity. By that I mean I'll try not to piss myself with terror when I see the waiting noose and black hood. I'll walk slowly and steadily, not betraying a hint of emotion or looking at anyone or anything. My last words will probably be along the lines of, "go fuck yourselves". No, that seems juvenile, perhaps "Death is only the beginning", no that's an outright lie. And also the last words of Lord Blackwood.

Unforgivables are completely outlawed, so I won't even be given the clean flash of Aveda Kedavra. Instead, I'll jerk and wriggle and slowly strangle to death because my starved body doesn't weigh enough to break my neck. I'll probably shit myself, probably scream if I can get any oxygen, and drool and spit like a mad man until at last all sensation leaves my limbs. I'll pray for death when the cloth bag that will hide my horror twisted visage from the delicate little Mud-bloods, who come to collect their pound of flesh, is slipped over my head and tightened against Adam's apple.

I wonder what emotions will flit through my head as I hang dying like a sack of meat before a crowd of pleased onlookers. Even now, I'm not afraid. I think I'm still denying it, I haven't accepted death, but, as I've said before, I don't really think anyone ever does. Somewhere, deep in my soul, or rather its tattered remnants, I still think that I'm going to live. That I will somehow escape, or grow black, leathery bat wings and fly away from my tormentors.

My ass hurts from sitting and my hand is cramping from holding this tiny pencil. My eyes are staining and my head is pounding as I try to see the dingy paper this is written on in the darkness.

I hear footsteps, I suppose I won't finish this at all. There is some much left I wanted to say. Ah, well, _C'est la vie_. Or _la morte_, I should probably say.

To Death, with love,

Draco Malfoy.

/

Pupils surrounded by irises the colour of new spring leaves watch with a soft concentration the figure that steps carefully and proudly towards a mocking grey noose. In the mind that directs those eyes in their careful focus on the figure, emotions muddle together and distort the truth of what is about to happen.

The soon to be ghost who is already as pale as one ascends the stairs with a calm certainty. He looks like he has accepted his fate, that he was at peace with leaving this world for the next. Almost relaxed.

Green eyes know that if they meet the doomed man's they will see a far different reality, so they don't seek them. After all, he does not wish to live with such guilt, to live with the startling terror that no doubt enshrouds those beloved silver eyes. No, it is better for him, easier, if this is how he can remember Draco Malfoy. Proud, and strong and full of the hatred only a Death Eater could embody.

He can't allow himself to view this creature as human, as a slight chuckle or the sparkle in a starlight eye. (Oh, the brightness of his cheek shames stars, as daylight doth a lamp.) He has to remember that he is looking at a Death Eater, he cannot see soft blond hair (like the finest lace) or skin more fragrant than any perfume he has ever unassumingly sprayed on himself in a Muggle department store, he must look instead to the sheet of skin (shot through with thin blue veins like tiny streams and brooks) on his left arm and the hideous black deformity that mars it, that is to his love a birthmark more than a tattoo.

The noose is slipped over his head and green eyes beg their master to be allowed to look away, but are denied. It is tightened around that snow white slender, elegant neck that would make a swan cry out in agonizing jealousy.

His hands are bound, but lime eyes see in his fist a wad of paper. The figure's lips open, they are pale pink, but chapped and broken like rose petals crushed under foot by some clumsy gardener.

"I am not ready to die, and I do not want to. I do not believe I deserve death, for I have taken no life." The figure pauses, "go fuck yourselves."

A hood covers a face that struggles not to contort with uncontrollable panic, a lever is pulled and pale, bare and bruised feet twitch and shudder a few meters from the mud that they will soon be one with.

/*/

I seem to write a lot of stories about Draco dying. I don't know why, but they just seem to flow more quickly than any other stories I try to write. Every story I think of with him ends in his death, usually via horror and agony. Anyway, this thing was really strange; let me know if you thought it was horrible or half decent.

Anyway, a bunch of lines are quotes or butchered quotes, if you can pick them out, know that I do not claim to own them.

Ps i reuploaded this because the spaces got fucked up.

R&R?


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